


twilight years

by McEnchilada



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 05:12:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18584458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McEnchilada/pseuds/McEnchilada
Summary: Q could choose to be anywhere else in the universe—literally—but for now he'll take a moment to humor his favorite human.





	twilight years

When Q came to collect him—at the end, at the beginning—it was in August, and the whole sky had ignited in gold. Picard barely glanced away to give Q a look.

“Well, mon capitan? Are you ready _now_?” Q asked snippily, the way did every time. He couldn’t understand Picard’s reluctance to part with his humdrum little life; after all, if he missed it, Q could put him right back where he’d left off, or at any other point in the timeline he might want to visit. Any point in any timeline, really, and maybe that was what kept Picard from saying yes. In an infinity of possibilities, how could he know if he’d ever actually return to just this moment? Would he even want to? He had to know he was ready to leave it behind.

Q was standing just behind him, looming over Picard’s shoulder, so he didn’t have to look at the impatient crease between his eyebrows. Picard smiled to himself, and sipped his tea, his eyes fixed on the wondrous sky to the west.

“Perhaps in a moment,” he answered lightly. He often did. It seemed like he always needed just another moment. “I want to watch the sunset.”

Q snorted, with none of the refinement one might expect of a being revered as divine on several worlds. “You call this a sunset? I could show you sunsets in colors your feeble monkey eyes couldn’t perceive, much less your mind comprehend. Sunsets over oceans of boiling glass, or on top of mountains taller than your moon is wide. I could put you down on a planet right in the middle of being devoured by its sun, everything blazing brighter, hotter, more beautiful than you’ve ever dreamed. _This_ sunset is nothing.”

“I know,” said Picard. “But I’d like to watch it anyway.”

He sipped his tea again, and Q sighed. He meant to leave again, taking Picard’s hesitation as a cue to try another time. Perhaps he’d wait years, this time; that would show him, the small, stubborn mortal who was under the impression he could _command_ Q. Yes, he’d spend years away, until Picard was left to wonder if he’d been forgotten about. He’d be eager to take Q’s offer then.

Picard reached behind him to place his hand on Q’s arm, to stop him from leaving. It had less power over him than a microbe had on a leviathan, but Q allowed it.

“Stay for a while. Watch it with me.”

Picard didn’t look up at Q, but the wrist beneath his hand remained where it was. Picard’s grip tightened slightly, enough to feel the perfect replication of a human pulse under his fingertips and know he wasn’t alone. Out on his back patio, breathing the lavender that bloomed in rows between the grapevines, beneath a sky of burnished clouds and wheeling birds, he was glad of the company. He closed his eyes to simply feel the sun on his face, and it was nearly as warm as the the sense of contentment unrolling along his rather aged muscles.

It was several minutes before the sun began to slip down his face, out of his eyes and over his lips, and down, slowly, over the rest of his body. When at last the gold was gone from even his feet, he finally looked back.

“You’re still here.” His fingers twitched against the not-really-real pulse point. He had known it, but a part of him remained surprised to see that Q had remained, silently taking in the view. He might have been imagining it. “I didn’t expect that you’d stay this long.”

“‘This long?’” scoffed Q. The human form he’d chosen for himself had a heartbeat, and even, when he bothered to remember it, blood pulsing inefficiently along its awkward limbs, but it was only a mantle all the same. That meant that it didn’t blush, and its eyes didn’t shift away from Picard’s appreciative look. “Not even a microsecond in the span of the universe.”

What was a sunset, to the gentle, grateful smile on Picard’s face? What was the universe?

“Thank you all the same.” It was fully dusk now, the hills repainted as silhouettes against a sapphire sky. Across the world, a sunrise would be tinting the sky pink as the world turned onward.

Picard finished his tea, and set the mug down. His hand slipped a little lower, so that his fingers could entwine themselves with Q’s.

“Well, then,” he said. “Show me your sunsets.”

In the darkness, all he saw was Q’s smile.

“Oh, Jean-Luc,” he promised. “I’ll show you the _world_.”

**Author's Note:**

> last night I finally finished TNG, having started watching it like three and a half years ago, & then I stayed up much past my bedtime to jot down this short little piece, & it's all John DeLancie's fault for playing Q _like that_


End file.
